


No Plan

by andaere



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, But Ben Can't Give Him One, Drug Use, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, They Miss Five
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-14 00:32:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18042032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andaere/pseuds/andaere
Summary: Sometimes, Ben hated his brother.(Set after their father's death, but before Five returns.)





	No Plan

**Author's Note:**

> The Umbrella Academy (and Klaus) broke my writer's block. I'm a little rusty and haven't posted before on AO3 so please bear with me!
> 
> The title comes from Hozier's new album, which I listened to while writing this.

Sometimes, Ben hated his brother.

Don’t get him wrong – he loved Klaus, really he did. They had always been close. Klaus had always done his best to comfort him when he came back from missions drenched in blood, his head and heart aching. And Ben had always been willing to join in whatever harebrained scheme Klaus had come up with to distract himself from the ghosts. 

But when you spend a lot of time with someone, they’re bound to get on your nerves. For Ben it was a thousand times worse. Klaus was the only person he could talk to, the only person who saw him. And half the time Klaus was determined to shut him and the world out through drugs and alcohol. The other half of the time he was making bad decisions and ignoring all of Ben’s advice. It was… frustrating, to put it lightly.

“This is a new low, even for you,” Ben observed, leaning against a bookcase. Well, it looked like he was leaning, but if he put any weight into it he’d fall right through it. (He was careful not to lean too far.)

Klaus ignored him, again. He did glare at Ben for a second though, so at least Klaus could see him. When he was really out of it, he usually didn’t acknowledge Ben.

“I mean,” Ben continued. “Stealing Dad’s stuff I understand. He was a bastard. But Five? Really?”

“Be quiet, Ben,” Klaus hissed. “Just go and tell me if Pogo is coming.”

Ben didn’t move except to cross his arms. He watched Klaus mutter to himself for a minute, knocking things over as he rifled through the bookcase. As usual, Klaus hadn’t thought this through, and Ben was stuck as the voice of reason and conscience. His annoyance flared, and he considered leaving Klaus to his own devices. But if he had any chance of talking Klaus out of this, it was worth a shot.

“What are you going to find of Five’s in a bookcase anyways?” Ben asked.

Klaus shrugged. “I don’t know, you guys were always reading books. Maybe I can find something he wrote in.”

Ben frowned. “We would never be caught dead writing in a book, not with Dad around.”

Klaus snickered. “Ben, you slay me. ‘Caught dead.’ Shit, sorry, was that insensitive? It’s okay if you say it right?”

Ben just sighed. Suddenly, Klaus gasped, stepping back and clapping his hands. Ben would have been alarmed, but he was used to his sibling’s dramatic antics by now.

“You’re a genius!” Klaus exclaimed. “His uniform! Of course!”

“I didn’t mention –” Ben began, but Klaus was already racing up the stairs. Ben followed him to Five’s room.

It looked untouched, but cared for. There was not a speck of dust anywhere. The bed was neatly made. Someone – Mom, most likely – had even opened the blinds and windows to air out the room. It looked like it was just waiting for its former occupant to come back.

Ben felt his incorporeal eyes burn. He still missed Five. It was a mystery, what had happened to him. Ben had no idea. Klaus had tried to look for him once in the ghost world, but he hadn’t found anything. He had tried heroin for the first time that night. As far as Ben knew, he hadn’t looked for Five again.

A crash brought his attention back to the present. Klaus had opened Five’s wardrobe and somehow managed to fall down while doing it. He was sitting on the floor, looking a little more dazed than usual.

Ben crouched down next to him. He hoped Klaus wasn’t injured, or going through withdrawal or a bad trip. As he often did, Ben cursed his inability to comfort his brother. Klaus had always responded to touch, but Ben couldn’t so much as put a hand on his shoulder. He couldn’t snap him out of it if something was wrong. He knew. He had shouted himself hoarse before trying.

“Klaus?” Ben hovered anxiously next to his brother. “Are you okay? Klaus?”

“M’okay,” Klaus giggled. “Just… clumsy.”

He held out a hand for Ben to help him up. Ben stared at him and raised his eyebrow. After a moment, Klaus huffed out a sheepish laugh and ran his hand through his hair. “Right, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.”

Klaus and Ben sat together for a while. His brother’s eyes flickered around the room, never focusing for long. Ben wondered what he was seeing, if the other ghosts were coming back or if he was hallucinating.

Maybe once Ben got him off the ground, they could go do something else. Even before Klaus gave up on sobriety entirely, he had always been distractible. It probably had something to do with the ghosts always vying for his attention.

Maybe they could watch a movie, or go to a museum or the beach. Ben was tired of always seeing dumpsters, ambulances, and rehab centers.

Unfortunately, it looked like Klaus had fixated on Five’s things again. He stood up and grabbed the sleeve of one of Five’s uniforms, rubbing the material between his fingers.

“Remember how Dad made us all wear these things?” Klaus asked. “Even when we were sixteen? I hated it. The fabric is _so_ uncomfortable. Chafes in all the wrong places. And he wouldn’t let me wear the schoolgirl skirt instead.”

“He wouldn’t let us do a lot of things.”

Klaus sighed shakily, rubbing his eyes with his hand. Ben was surprised to see moisture smearing the makeup around his eyes. Klaus dug around in his pocket abruptly, pulling out another packet of drugs. Ben watched in disappointment as his brother kissed the baggie and opened it.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Klaus muttered after glancing at him.

“Why not? It’s never stopped you before.” Ben let some of his frustration bleed into his voice. He couldn’t count how many times he’d had some variation of this conversation with Klaus.

Before he’d died, Klaus had already been developing a drug habit. He would roll joints at the table or sneak down to the bar in the middle of the night, leaving Ben to cover for him or wake him up after he passed out downstairs. After Ben’s death, Klaus didn’t even try to hide it anymore. And after a few years, no one tried to stop him. Well, no one except Ben, and sometimes Diego.

But Klaus was stubborn, and terrified. He never listened. Still, Ben had to try.

“It’s just a waste, is all,” he said. “If I were alive –”

“Nooooo,” Klaus whined. “Don’t play the dead card. You’re only allowed to do that once a year and you did it already.”

“No I didn’t. And we never agreed on that rule, that’s ridiculous.”

“Yes we did, we agreed on it yesterday.”

“You were high all day yesterday. You didn’t talk to me. At least not anything that made sense. Maybe you were talking to a hallucination of me.”

Klaus looked briefly disconcerted at that, then shrugged and popped the pills into his mouth.

“It still counts,” he said after swallowing.

Ben felt hot rage pass over him, the kind that came over him occasionally and made him wish he could punch Klaus, or grab the drugs from his hands and flush them down the toilet. Klaus was lucky enough to be alive, and he was wasting every second of it. And worse, Ben had to watch him waste it, because he had nothing better to do. Because he loved his brother and he hoped every day that something would change.

Klaus had gone back to staring at Five’s uniforms. Ben swallowed his anger once again and walked to his brother’s side.

“You won’t get any money by selling those,” Ben said with once last attempt at reason. “People don’t care anymore.”

“I know,” Klaus said, to Ben’s surprise. He sat down heavily on Five's bed. “I guess I just wanted to see him again. Or… what’s left of him.”

“Yeah,” Ben said. He joined Klaus, who shivered as the ghost sat by his side. “Me too.”

Ben wondered how things would be if Five hadn’t disappeared. He wondered if things would be better. It didn't seem possible for things to be worse.

They sat there in Five's room until the sun went down.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the abrupt and angsty ending... Please let me know what you think!


End file.
